by Paige Nickel
Without Prospects There Are No Leads, And With No Leads There Are No Sales
Finding prospects and nurturing them into leads are the building blocks to any sales cycle. “Build it, and they will come” no longer suffices in today’s competitive market. Although we know that most of you work with banks or big organizations and marketing is responsible for finding your prospects, lets face it, you’re a sales-person. You’re not happy with just those leads. In fact, if you’re a loan officer relying exclusively on your marketing department, and not striving to gain more prospects and leads on your own, you’re missing out on a ton of opportunity. Here are five ways for you to build your personal pipeline that will generate more prospects, leads, and ultimately new clients.
How To Accumulate Prospects
Accumulating prospects is all about being at the right place, at the right time, and talking to the right people. A few ways you can reach serious prospects include the following:
Use Social-Media Platforms
Social-media is a quick way to weasel your way into specific groups, demographics, and locations where you can meet the type of people that you’re targeting. These networking platforms offer you a way to quickly grow your prospective-customer list by gaining new relationships, sharing relevant content, and engaging in friendly and topical conversation.
Connect with Influencers
By connecting and sharing influencers’ posts on your social platforms, you may just get lucky. By the law of reciprocity, they may share your content as well, stamping a seal of approval and introducing your brand and your business to their entire list of followers.
Have Social Proof
Encourage your customers to leave feedback and become your brand ambassadors. Companies that encourage feedback, both positive and negative, have more success. Put your positive feedback to use by making it viewable on your website, and make an incentive for others to leave feedback that will increase potential prospects’ confidence in you. Use your negative feedback to learn what you should improve on or change. Always deal directly with any negative feedback in a positive, empathetic manner, and take the conversation offline as soon as possible. Some negative critics, when handled well, can become allies and supporters! Word of mouth about a positive experience is a powerful thing.
Create Good Content
The attention span of the average American is about as long as a goldfish, and once you have received the attention of a set of eyes, it’s even harder to keep. Be sure your information is interesting enough to grab your target audience’s attention, and relavant enough to keep it. Good content is the key to subscriptions, a loyal audience, and winning new clients. Oh, and don’t forget to add plenty of pictures. Posts loaded with colorful and large pictures get double the shares and engagement.
Mingle
Attend events and trade shows and meet people. Face-to-face is the original social-media and is just as important now as it was in the past. Get to know people on a personal level. Go to these events as a person first and a loan officer second. Make your rounds and talk to everyone, tell them about yourself, ask them about their hobbies, family, and work; be fun, let loose, exchange contact information and follow up. People want to work with a friend — so be friendly and gain another prospect while you’re at it.
Advertise Locally
You may want to check into the regulations in your area as some laws may be tricky, but advertising locally can have a big impact on your pipeline. You can always ask if you can leave a stack of business cards at your favorite coffee shop or book store. This is a cheap and modest way of marketing yourself that may result in large returns.
It All Goes Hand In Hand
Once you have accumulated a collection of prospects or leads you may think your work is done. Sorry, it’s not done until you have won the client. All of these tips require constant attention. Follow up on a regular basis and stay in contact with your leads on a professional and friendly level, but DO NOT be too pushy. No one likes a pest. By building these tips into your daily schedule you will grow your lists of prospects, but even more importantly you will grow your list of clients.
So tell me, how do you attract prospects and win new clients?